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The Military Industrial Complex
The Military Industrial-Financial Complex is American ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit rolled into one compact, patriotic town-sized manufacturing plant. Most Americans don't know where their fighter jets or Bradley fighting vehicles are made. As a public service, Wikiality.com has teamed up with Halliburton to help Americans learn All They Need To Know about where our troops get their state-of-the-art Freedom-protecting, Democracy-bringing, WMD-never-finding destroying, evildoer-defeating, Mission-Accomplishing equipment. 's crowning glory: The Military Industrial Complex!]] What is Made At the MIC? Money. It is basically a government transfer program which moves roughly 70% of the citizens' tax dollars from their possession to Wall Street's, where it rightfully is entitled to reside. Vehicles The 5-passenger Imaginary Fighting Vehicle (IFV), sometimes referred to as the Bradley or the Infantry-Fighting Vehicle, was intended to replace the old-fashioned Armored Personnel Carrier (APC), which carried 11. You can see the obvious advantage to this: doubles the number required for each infantry squad and increases AMF's bottom line. (The Project Manager for this program was a retired Air Force colonel, which is another function of the MIC; creating jobs for military retirees.) This was supposed to have happened in the '70s, but didn't really hit the ground until the mid-80s. By then, the Infantry had decided they didn't really want a hardtop for cruising around the war zone, so they decided to park the IFV, and replace the Jeep--a non-tactical vehicle--with the HUMMV ("Hummer"), which they could dress up as a tactical vehicle. When, in Afghanistan and Iraq, it became obvious that these were poor replacements for the IFV, which they weren't intended to be, the GI Mommies of America screamed for better armor on those faux jeeps. Then GMC made a lot more money on the up-armored retrofit. The M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank (MBT). As is customary in the Armed Forces, the current war is always a matter of re-fighting the last one with the things we thought of afterward. This involves improvements on the old technologies irrespective of current applicability. Thus, what would have been a really neat response to the German Tiger tanks in WWII became the M1 Abrams in the 80s. The fact that we really don't have a use for such monstrosities in the absence of wars involving Great Tank Battles is not accounted for in the "why not?" calculus. Originally slated for fielding in Armored units in the '70s, it also failed to appear before the mid-80s. But what a beauty for the investors! The engine-transmission module alone is a $750,000 package. And it gets 7 gallons per mile, to boot, which is great for Exxon. And, it necessitated a special tractor-trailer rig ($700,000 per unit) to tow it to the battle area, where it was basically used as a self-propelled artillery piece, there being no Taliban tanks to do battle with. Even the Army tired of this, however, and ceased ordering new ones in 2010. When General Dynamics complained, Congress stepped in and insisted on giving them another $270 million to retrofit older M1A1s to the current M1A2 specs. Slogans Peace is Our Profession--US Air Force Attitudes As the Army Psychological Operations motto puts it: "Influence, Persuade, Change--If that doesn't work, Napalm!" In the interest of influencing the public to believe that Psychological Operations is really just factual Public Information, they have changed their name to Military Information Support Operations, which is thought to be more persuasive than Psychological Warfare. Seems a lot of soldiers were getting confused with the old nomenclature, and showing up at Mental Hygiene for brainwashing when what they really wanted was treatment for their Traumatic Brain Injury, which is not considered a psychological operation unless it also involves an attitude adjustment. This was apparently a leading cause of the current increase in the suicide rate in the Army. Who Works At the MIC? Bankers, brokers, hedge fund managers... Contractor Liaisons Government Liaisons How Are New Products Made? Slowly, v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. At cost-plus, and preferably by award of a no-bid contract. And, so the selected contractor doesn't have to risk anything, the government will provide the manufacturing facilities at no cost. R&D Sales & Marketing Building A Prototype Acquiring Government Funding Writing It All Off Re-investing In The MIC Great Places To Spend Your Vacation A Primer On Off-Shore Banking External Tubes *Help! We need a bailout!